The subject of the present invention is a method of transcoding data expressed in digital words of like number of bits, according to a thermometric type coding, the successive values of which can be represented in the form of a first matrix each row of which is a digital word.
Thermometric codes are very frequently employed in particular in analog-digital converters, which, owing to the resistance scales used to define reference levels for comparison, generate thermometric codes internally to the converter. An analog-digital converter therefore has a code converter (or decoder), the function of which is to transform the thermometric code into a binary code. Such a conversion requires a large number of comparators (or gates), thus noticeably increasing the area occupied on an integrated circuit. The conversion of a cyclic thermometric code with 2.sup.N -bit words into a binary code requires in fact not less than 2.sup.N comparators (or gates).